Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Managing the world: the United Nations, decolonization, and the strange triumph of state sovereignty in the 1950s and 1960s*

  • Eva-Maria Muschik
  • Journal:
    Journal of Global History / Volume 13 / Issue 1 / March 2018
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    14 February 2018, pp. 121-144
    Print publication:
    March 2018

  • This article examines a 1956 United Nations effort to respond to decolonization, by supplying newly independent governments with international administrators to help build sovereign nation-states out of the disintegrating European empires and anchor them firmly within the capitalist world. The article reveals the UN as a significant historical actor during the Cold War beyond the organization’s function of providing a forum for intergovernmental debates and lobbying. While the initiative never resulted in a large-scale response to decolonization, it ultimately effected a substantial shift in the practice of development assistance: from advisory services to a more paternalist approach that focused on ‘getting the work done’ on behalf of aid recipients. Recovering this history helps account for the strange triumph of state sovereignty in the second half of the twentieth century: its global proliferation at a time when international actors became increasingly active in the management of the public affairs of developing countries.